J.K. Rowling And Her Magical Cash Cow

On Friday, the third movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, opens in the United States. Based on the results from the U.K., where the film opened Monday, Pottermania is alive and doing quite well. According to boxofficemojo.com, the movie set a new U.K. opening day record, grossing $9.2 million.

The big-budget movie, produced by
Time Warner
‘s
Warner Bros., has a different director than the first two movies and reportedly is darker than the others, which could appeal to the legions of fans who are growing up–and out of Harry’s age group. Prisoner of Azkaban will have stiff competition from Shrek II, the product of two other billionaires. Shrek II, which has ruled the U.S. box office for the past two weekends, was produced and distributed by
DreamWorks
, the studio owned by billionaires Steven Spielberg and David Geffen and millionaire Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Unlike those famous Hollywood moguls, Rowling lives in rural Scotland with her second husband and two children. Her welfare-to-billionaire status is a true Cinderella story, especially since it happened within a ten-year span (see “J.K. Rowling And The Billion-Dollar Empire“). The five Harry Potter books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide, giving a huge boost to the stock price of the U.S. publisher,
Scholastic
, and then there’s the merchandising: from
Mattel
toys to Band-Aids and jelly beans.

The release of the third movie will be closely watched to see if Pottermania has run its course in the U.S. Mattel previously reported that sales of Potter toys were down. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second film, released in late 2002, took in $866 million–$100 million short of the record set by the first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Rowling shares creative control over the films and negotiated an undisclosed cut of the profits.

She’s currently working on the sixth–and second to last–Harry Potter book, and recently unveiled the official J.K. Rowling Web site, where she comments on Harry Potter rumors, shares extra information she didn’t put in the books and give clues about what Harry’s future holds. The Web site is where she’ll announce that she has finished the sixth book, but fans will have to wait. “That’s not going to happen very soon,” she writes on the site.